John Cheever Essays

In the story “The Swimmer” by John Cheever, Neddy the main character takes a journey through his neighbor’s pools across town. As Neddy swims across his neighborhood we see that he thinks of himself to be better than everyone else, he seems to have a happy life but as time goes on nevertheless we find Neddy isolating himself from others. He makes a habit of declining invitations to neighborly parties because he believes to be of a higher social class than his friends. We also see a pattern in the

The short story, “The Swimmer” by John Cheever shows the journey of a man, Neddy Merrill, swimming in the many pools through his county to his home. It took him a very long time to do this, but his perception of time was very hard understand as the story went on. Throughout his journey, he drank a lot of alcohol. The consumption of alcohol was able to get him through the many pools, but at the end he was very weak and confused. At every pool he stopped at, he asked the homeowners for a drink. Many

John Cheever’s “The Swimmer” is a beautiful, multi layered depiction of a man's unwitting downfall. The story follows Neddy Merrill, a somewhat alcoholic and adventurous man, as he takes a expedition to go home by pool hopping the country. Neddy is the source of his own undoing as he represses years of his life pool by pool and eventually he has to come to terms with his life. Cheever poetically uses symbolism to indirectly show the changing of Neddy, his situation, and the world around him. Neddy

A “Dive” Into Literary Criticism John Cheever’s short story “ The Swimmer” sets in the midsummer season with the main character, Neil Merrill, Merrill is described as a man with an authentic young soul, but nevertheless “far from young” (1). After recalling a pleasant summer memory, Merrill decides to go back home in a particular way by swimming across everyone of his friends’ pools inside the county. On his journey, he meets with old friends and neighbors after a very long time. Through his

across pools to reach his suburban home in John Cheever’s short story “The Swimmer”. This story represents the American Dream for a period of time, but then the truth comes out. Neddy is no longer living the fancy, rich life with his family. Instead, he lives only for the next drink and thoughts of his former life. The main character, Neddy Merrill, is an oblivious, selfish man that is going through a midlife crisis. At the beginning of the story, Cheever makes Neddy’s life looks like the picture

Merrill chose this exact method. “The Swimmer” was written by John Cheever in 1964. The short story was published in The New Yorker magazine on July 18, 1964, and was turned into a film in 1968. It follows Neddy Merrill’s journey home through the suburbs via a river of his neighbors’ pools that he names after his wife, Lucinda. “The Swimmer” uses symbols, dramatic irony, and plot devices to show suburban emptiness. Throughout the story, Cheever uses symbols to convey suburban emptiness. Pools are an example

Text: The Swimmer, John Cheever Selected passage: Beginning to “friends would line the banks of the Lucinda River” (pgs 1-2 in pdf) Thesis: In the opening paragraphs of “The Swimmer”, John Cheever introduces the ideals of booming suburban life in post-war America; the American Dream, affluence and wealth, and youth and vitality. Told through a third-person narrator, the passage foreshadows the plight of Neddy Merrill by using repetition and vivid language to symbolize suburban monotony and enhance

In the short story ‘‘The Swimmer’’, written by John Cheever and published in the ‘’The Brigadier’’[1], we follow Neddy (Ned) Merrill through his journey home. While Ned swims home through the pools in his neighbourhood, the people around him change and some are not where they are supposed to be, and his memory fails him. When he finally arrives at his destination, he notices that something is terribly wrong. The main character and protagonist in the story is Neddy Merrill, who decides to go home

John Cheever Legendary Short-Story Writer John Cheever was a “bestselling, Pulitzer prize-winning author of five novels and some of the most brilliant short stories ever published” (Cooke, 1). He was part of a middle-class family that lived in Massachusetts. Although Cheever went to a private school and was a creative writer, he had a difficult time succeeding academically. He went to Thayer Academy in high school where he was expelled for smoking and bad grades. John Cheever can be compared to

destinations of which the traveler is aware" (brainyquote.com). This quote connects to John Cheever 's short story, "The Swimmer". This short story contains various ideas such as suburbia and alcoholism. One of the most important ideas portrayed in “The Swimmer” is that time is inevitable. Cheever was born in May 1912, in Massachusetts (“John Cheever”). Cheever is sometimes referred to as the “Chekhov of suburbs” (“John Cheever”). Anton Chekhov was a highly regarded author, known for his themes of banality

The short story The Swimmer, by John Cheever, begins the main character’s, Neddy Merrill, journey off with a hangover on a sunny, hot day. He started thinking, and came to the conclusion that he could swim home on the Lucinda “River.” His journey began quickly and had no time for conversation because it would only delay it. His first rest was at the halfway point of the River where he paused at the Levy’s house where he helped himself to something to drink. While resting it began to storm complete

were strangers until they finally got to see each other for the first time in years. However when they started spending time with each other, Charlie and his father found it difficult trying to repair their relationship. In the text ‘Reunion’, John Cheever emphasizes on symbolism, background information, to show the hardships of trying to rebuild a relationship. The author uses symbolism throughout the story to show how difficult it can be to reconstruct a bond. Some hidden aspects of the story

. Out of his depth In the short allegory, ‘The Swimmer’ (1968), John Cheever explores the grandeur of the title character, Ned Merrill, a posh middle-aged man on the brink of alcoholism who lives in a world devoid of spiritual meaning and filled with materialism. Throughout the story, Ned’s path or more aptly put, his seemingly journey of self, pool by pool, is one that is indubitably complex – it resonates with the concept of uprooting himself from a semblance of idealized ‘reality’ that he created

John Cheever Born May 27, 1912 died June 18,1982 “For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the noise of battle. It has the power to give grief or universality that lends it a youthful beauty.” John Cheever John Cheever was born May 27, 1912. During the years leading up to the Great Depression his parents owned a gift shop and a shoe factory. The shoe factory was a victim of the depression and the family survived on the income generated by his mother’s gift shop. He was expelled

In “The Swimmer,” John Cheever portrays the declining emotional state of Ned Merrill, a man who lives in a suburban neighborhood with his wife and kids. In the story, Ned decides to go home from his friend’s house by swimming through every pool in the neighborhood, a strange journey on which he interacts with many of his neighbors. In this paper, I will argue that Cheever uses the irony of Ned’s “great adventure” swimming in the neighborhood pools to criticize the stifling suburban lifestyle of the

Evan Meyer Professor Cara Snider English 102:21 March 5, 2018 When put together, insight about John Cheever's childhood, paired with the characterization in this story manufactures and reinforces the stories most evident theme: appearances can be deceiving. To start off, the reader is given a bleak description of an average couple living in Manhattan in the 1940's, with the only thing separating them from their peers is their taste in "serious music." When their radio finally breaks, the

The first text is called "Reunion", the text is a short story. Which is written by the American writer John Cheever, the short story is from 1962 but was later introduced in one of his collection of stories. Which has the name "The stories of John Cheever", John Cheever got 2 prizes in his career, while he died 20 years after, he wrote "reunion. Our second text is called "living with strangers" and is from the writer Siri Hustvedt, her essay was published in 2002, Siri Hustvedt is also from America

within whole government structures. Great authors, John Cheever and Max Brooks, depict the theme of personal and large scale denial through the story-telling of each characters’ accounts in their engaging tales, “The Swimmer,” and “World War Z.” John Cheever takes us on an epic journey home with Neddy Merrill in “The Swimmer.” Neddy is hungover and in denial about the shape of his current life. He is determined to swim home through neighbors pools. Cheever exposes Neddy’s delusions early stating, “The

Great Depression of the 30s. As a result, monetary worth was a crucial factor in determining one’s worth besides smaller factors like contribution to wartime efforts. This can be illustrated by an excerpt from the short story, “The Swimmer” by John Cheever. In the story, the protagonist swims through different pools in an attempt to characterize suburban lifestyle. In the process, he reaches the Biswangers’ pool and remembers that he didn’t socialize with them a lot, because of their social standing

John Cheever’s once said “Homesickness is nothing. Fifty percent of people in the world are homesick all the time.” Perhaps this thought of homesickness was Cheever’s basis for writing his short story The Swimmer. Through the story of the main character Neddy, Cheever uses several motifs and symbols to display two main themes, the inevitable passage of time and the emptiness of suburbia. Cheever’s eclectic structure, tone, motifs, and characters help to display the inevitable passage of time and